From living to staying : design guidelines for the adaptive reuse of heritage homes as heritage homestays in Suzhou

Abstract

The adaptive-reuse of architecture is an important means to revitalize historical buildings. This needs to replace the new functional space while protecting the historical value of the building. Living space is one of the new directions for the reuse of historical buildings. The characteristic historical atmosphere and special meaning of historical buildings provide more advantages for homestay, and the development of homestay also provides the activation of real meaning for the protection of ancient buildings, so that more people can experience and understand the significance of historical buildings. AS a result, more and more ancient buildings have been transformed into homestays in modern China. Unlike the UK and Japan, where there is a tradition of home-based accommodation, known respectively as B&B and minshuku, such tradition in China is a relatively new phenomenon, and happening only within the past 20 years. The quality of such heritage homes adapted as heritage homestays is mixed, and the issue is basically about the balance between heritage retention and provide adequate new design and facilities to ensure a comfort stay for guests. At present, there is no design guideline for such a balance, this thesis is aimed to find out whether such a set of design guideline can be formulated. From the research gap identified in the literature review, the scope of this research is to establish a set of guidelines for homestay in heritage buildings. As different places will have specific contextual conditions for such guidelines, the context chosen for this research is Suzhou, a place in China known for cultural tourism due to its many historical Chinese classical gardens, a number of which have been inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. What is most relevant to this research is that there are many historical residential areas in Suzhou, where there are heritage buildings that have, or potentially able to, become heritage homestays. The research focuses on two case-studies of heritage homestays that are housed in historic buildings that are more than a century old. These two cases are located in a historic district that is popular with domestic and overseas tourists.